i can confirm that it eglglessink is now "working" without X, but seems to be framedropping to keep up. it is definitely smoother, but by my estimate around 15fps. still not on par with omxplayer, but is starting to get better and better.

wow! you're right. I was using videoconvert in my pipeline - which drops out. your video-only pipeline works fine at 720p - but still has framedropping issues at 1080p. (although this could be because of my slow SD card...)